The Moz Blog

Link Building from A to Z

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community.The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not
reflect the views of Moz.

Although you can easily find lists with 21, 66, 69, 75, 101 or even 131 link building strategies, numbered (link building) tip lists remain very popular. Not because these articles provide shocking new insights - most of the aforementioned mentioned lists mention pretty much the same tactics - but because they remind people of how work intensive the ongoing process of link building can be, and because they make people think due to their in-depth nature. "How can I use these tactics for our website?" "Which of the listed tactics are relevant for our company?" Or, even better, "What strategies would I have added to this list?"

This list, hopefully, makes you think about your current strategy, and reminds you that you can (and have to) link build your az off continuously.

Although there are thousands of unimportant, irrelevant or simply weird web award contests out there, there are hundreds of great, appealing and well-respected awards being hosted every year as well. I'm not saying that you should aim for an ad:tech Award or a Webby straight away, but there are probably several interesting awards available in your industry as well. If this happens not to be the case, you can also choose to create your own award.

Business partners

There are dozens of legitimate ways of trading links with other websites without having to fear that your website receives some kind of reciprocal link filter or penalty. Asking a select group of your business partners to mention your company somewhere on their website (while doing the same for them) is a perfect example of this. You could either create a page that lists your most important business partners (which also might be of interest to potential new customers), or mention them on multiple different pages across your website.

Creating link pages that carry hundreds of links to slightly relevant 'partners' don't work anymore (ever wondered why most links.php pages have a grey PageRank?), but establishing link partnerships with a small amount of highly relevant websites can definitely be useful.

Customers

There's nothing better than a happy customer. Happy customers often come back to buy more of your goods, or they might tell their friends about your products or services. If you're able to identify your happiest customers, you can try to see if these brand evangelists might be willing to link to your website. If you're in the b2b industry, you can ask for a testimonial or product review, and if you're selling products to consumers, you can target those customers who have a personal blog or website. While offering a discount, samples, beta invites or something else definitely is an option, it isn't even always necessary. Like I said, there's nothing better than a happy customer...

Directories

Submitting your website to directories as a link building strategy has already been beaten with a stick hundreds of times, but it still remains a valid tactic that definitely works. Of course, that's if you're doing it the right way.

Submitting your website to a few (which can vary from about 5 to a few dozen) high quality relevant directories? Yes. Auto-submitting your website to several hundreds of general directories? No. Identify which directories are the most important and relevant ones for your company (which can either be general, niche or local directories), submit your website, and move on.

Events, Charities & Sponsorships

Speaking at, liveblogging from, or maybe even sponsoring an industry event (or charity) can lead to links as well. A large benefit of these links is that, besides being highly relevant and providing traffic, they can create a reputable image of you (or your company), because you show that you know what's happening and what matters in your industry. Also, events are a regularly returning opportunity, as most events and conferences are not one-time-only.

Forums

Although it may seem like a very easy way to get more links, link building through forums can be very tricky. However, it can also be one of the most valuable in terms of branding and the amount of targeted visitors. There are several ways of building links through forums.

A tactic that's being used quite often is signature-based link building. When you're doing this yourself (some 'rent' the signature of high profile forum members), it's a good way to build a brand on the forum you're participating in, as long as you contribute regularly. It is also a good way to disguise your link profile a little bit for other link marketers, as Yahoo tends to show each forum link individually. Tools like MajesticSEO and Linkscape have devalued this benefit, but it may still be valid in some cases.

A different way to build links through forums (and that's being used a lot) is link dropping. Some people think that creating an account, starting a topic (or leaving a comment) and dropping a URL won't reach the attention of the forum moderators. Most of these links, however, are deleted within 5 minutes after the topic has been created, or the reply has been added.

Another way in which you can use forums to attract extra links is by sponsoring a contest. Lots of forums have contests (photo contests, poetry contests, etc) regularly. Donate a prize to the winner of one of these contests, and you might receive a link in return.

Like I said, forums can be very tricky in terms of link building, especially when you're more or less just dropping your link. This is considered as spam, and can have a bad effect on your brand (or your clients), so only use forums in your link building strategy when you're able to dedicate enough time to it.

Although forum links have been devalued by search engines in the past (mainly because of abuse by spammers), I do think that links on forums that are being moderated with good care can be pretty valuable. The social control on forums is pretty high, which might be a signal to search engines as well.

Guest Blogging

One of the most efficient ways to build deep links with the anchor text of your choice is by guest blogging (or guest writing) for other websites. You write an article that will be published on a different website, and in exchange for that contribution, you're usually allowed to add a link (or a few) to your own website. Because you're the writer of the article, you choose which anchor text will be used and what URLs will be referred to, so you have full control. This YOUmoz post is an example of guest blogging :)

If you have proven yourself as a good writer or networker, your guest post might be posted on a very well-read blog or website, which not only provides extra link strength, but lots of extra visitors as well.

Hire Help

Outsourcing isn't an option for everybody, but it's definitely worth considering. You can either let somebody you trust manage (a part of) your campaign, or you could visit a link building workshop or training. Especially when you’ve been building links to your own site for quite some time, a fresh mindset can bring in some new ideas and point of views.

Although asking an expert for advice definitely is an option, hiring some help doesn't have to be expensive. Amazon Mechanical Turk, for example, can be awesome for outsourcing easy (and sometimes annoying) tasks. However, it's important to keep an eye on the quality, but that's always the case.

Industry Authorities

Every industry has at least a few 'must-have' links. These links are links on the most authoritative websites (either in # of visitors or SE rankings), which, if you're able to get them, almost certainly will give you a boost in rankings. Whether you're simply sending out a link request, creating link targeted content, networking your ass off, or guest blogging (see 'G'), these industry authorities are well worth spending a few hours of your time on. Take your time to identify these important link targets and to craft a custom strategy to get links from these targets; the value of the links will usually pay back the investment.

Job Websites

When it comes to link building, vacancies are often forgotten. However, especially when your company is somewhat larger, the amount of links that a single job ad can result in can be quite high. Ask your HR officer on which websites your latest vacancy is being shown, and you might be surprised about the numbers.

Although lots of these links will disappear over time (when the vacancy is filled, for example), vacancy pages often accumulate quite some PageRank. Therefore, it's important not to forget to list your most important products (“this is what we do...”) on your 'jobs' page in order to distribute the link strength to these money making pages.

Killer Content

Yes, I know that you get slapped around the ears with 'just create good content' a lot, but it's true. Not just for link baiting, where you try to push your content via sources like social media, but for regular link building as well.

When you're building links for a highly commercial website with just a few pages, you're probably having a hard time obtaining good links. Creating informative pages, preferably with some attractive images and/ or video material, and adding these to the website makes the process of persuasion easier, and will increase your link conversion rate drastically.

Linkers of the Past

Ask people who have linked to a press release page, article, tool or any other page on your website in the past to check out your newly added, relevant content. If this page is relevant enough, he or she might link to you again. A very easy and very efficient tactic.

If there are specific websites you'd love to get another link from, that have already linked to you before, target the content specifically at these websites. Also, you can ask the owner or editor of the website you want to obtain a link from to contribute to the content you're creating, in order to increase the chance of being linked to by this person once again.

Microsites & Other Domains

Companies usually own dozens to hundreds of websites. Especially if you've hired a traditional marketing agency in the past (those guys *love* to launch a new microsite every month or so), you probably have a few domains lying around you're not aware of. If you work at a small company, there will be at least a few, but if you work for a large company, there will probably be a lot.

Link these websites (carefully!) together, make them point to relevant, money making pages on your most important domain, or redirect the most important and/ or relevant ones to your main website. If you're planning on redirecting them, make sure that the content is as similar and/ or relevant as possible; otherwise the 301 might not transfer all of the link strength.

News

Although most news websites are always looking for new content, it can be pretty hard to get your product, company or website mentioned sometimes. Instead of just relying on the plain old push methods, such as sending out a press release, it can be wise to identify and network with influential journalists from your industry.

On websites like WeFollow.com, TweepGuide, or other sources, you can easily find journalists in your neighborhood or industry. Networking via Twitter is just a start, but most of these journalists have personal blogs as well, which usually are listed in their Twitter bio. These blogs are just another door to their attention.

Another tip for when you're finding it hard to reach news websites is to send out press releases during the summer, holidays, or other moments when the amount of real news is relatively low. In these periods, you usually have a higher possibility of getting mentioned.

Offline Media

While most people don't think about offline media (yes, that's TV, radio and all that other 'old' stuff) during a link building campaign, offline sources create tons of links indirectly every day. I've seen campaigns that started offline and only mentioned a URL, that resulted in hundreds of links. And most of these campaigns weren't even optimized, so there's a lot of potential.

The trick (and most difficult part at the same time) is to create a path where an offline signal triggers someone to go online and visit a URL, and from there on to tell his or her friends by linking to it. This usually works best with linkbaity campaigns, so think about those offline media every once and a while when you're developing a linkbait campaign.

Places Where You're Already Being Mentioned

There's low hanging fruit, and there's LOW hanging fruit. Search for websites that already mention your business name, URL, or your personal name, but haven’t linked to your website. This works pretty good (not flawless) in Yahoo!. Contact the website owner or editor, and ask if it's possible to add a link ("it's more user friendly"), and perhaps even to give it a descriptive anchor text.

Q&A Websites

Websites where people can ask questions, such as Yahoo! Answers, Mahalo, or a more niche site like LinkedIn, are great for branding, content research and link building. Regularly answering questions that are related to your business helps you to build a (personal) brand, just like with forum participation.

While you're answering these questions, you get a clear image of which questions are being asked a lot. You can try to answer these questions in an FAQ on your own website in order to attract traffic through search engines. You can also direct people on these Q&A websites to your FAQ, so you build extra traffic and links. However, use this with care. I've seen quite some people using Q&A websites to build links in a spammy way, which isn't very good for branding.

Relevant Organizations

The (local) Better Business Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, or any other industry organization usually adds links to all their members. Don't forget to add yours. Although some of these links are being nofollowed and others may be buried quite deep into the website, it's still low hanging fruit waiting to be picked.

Also, some of these organizations also provide industry related content, such as a blog, research or an article database. Try to determine if it's possible to contribute, and if so provide tips, visuals, or any other content that can be accompanied by a link to your website.

Suppliers

Just like with customers (see 'C'), you can also get your suppliers involved in your link building campaign, for example with testimonials. Lots of companies would love to add something like "We've been clients of SEOmoz for over 5 years now, and they've never let us down. Awesome rankings and excellent service." - John Doe, Company X to their website, so offer to give your top suppliers a positive quote.

When you happen to be working for a big brand, you can also create an 'Official Company X Supplier' logo. Especially when your company has a good name, there are lots of companies who'd be more than willing to add such a button to their websites. This also works excellently for resellers and accredited or qualified companies.

Twitter

The wide acceptance of Twitter and the broad selection of Twitter tools have made it into a medium that can be used on so many levels, one of which is for link building.

Like I said before, Twitter can be great to find and network with influential journalists and bloggers (see 'N'), but it can also be used during a content brainstorm or for trend research. For example, tools like Twitturly, which keeps track of popular URLs on Twitter, and Twist, which shows trends on Twitter, are very useful.

Besides the other possible uses for Twitter, such as brand monitoring, initiating the launch of a campaign, recruitment or maybe even direct business, you can also use it to simply let all of your followers know that you've got news while linking to it.

Universities

It sometimes looks like everybody and their dog are chasing .edu links because of their higher search engine value. While I doubt that an .edu link is more valuable than a link on any other TLD by default, the majority of links coming from an .edu domain are relatively juicy.

There are lots of ways to get links from .edu domains, but you'll have to keep in mind that relevance still remains a very important factor. So don't go chasing after any university or college link you can get (the same goes for .gov and .mil links, btw), but try to focus on the most relevant ones instead.

A few examples of how to get .edu links are by speaking at a university or college (for example, about Internet Marketing), through an intern, career or school fairs, offering student discounts, or being interviewed for (or contributing to) the school paper. Just with any other TLD, it's just common sense.

Video Websites

Just like image websites can help you to build links and drive traffic, video websites can do the same. Regularly upload great, relevant videos to YouTube, Vimeo or any other video website you think is useful in order to build up a subscriber base. Add relevant tags and a link to your website, so you can easily get found on the video website and can lead traffic to yours. These videos don't have to be explosively amazing or remarkably clever; sometimes surprisingly simple can be enough as well. Tools like TubeMogul can make the process of uploading to multiple video hosting sites somewhat easier and faster.

Widgets

Although building links through widgets can backfire if not done correctly, it can also be very effective when you do it right. I think Rand explains it very well in one of the Whiteboard Friday videos; it all boils down to intent, destination URL and clearness.

The great thing with widgets is that nearly any company can use this strategy, as most industries have at least something that's widgetizable. However, the biggest mistake I see being made is companies who think, “Hey, let's make a widget where people can display some of our products they think are cool.” Just think of what kind of widget *you* would display on your website...

X-robots Tag, Robots.txt & 404s

While search engines can find most of the pages on the web, there are also quite some pages that aren't accessible to search engine bots. A noindex-tag or robots.txt block is quite common.

Determine which of your URLs are restricted for search engines and use Yahoo!'s SiteExplorer to see which links are pointing to these URLs. Either remove the search engine robot block, change 'noindex, nofollow' into 'noindex, follow', or contact the linking website and ask if it's possible to adjust the URL they're referring to. You can do pretty much the same with 404 error pages - Google provides quite some info about this in the Webmaster Console.

Also, in some cases you might be linked to from pages that can't be crawled by search engines. I received a link once from someone who kept his blog out of every search engine's index by adding a 'noindex, nofollow' x-robots tag to it. When I emailed him about this, he told me that he wasn't aware of it, removed the 'noindex, nofollow' tag, and linked to me once again as a thank you. People make mistakes all the time, so pointing them out can be worthwhile.

Your Own Website

If you're looking for a quick, cheap, easy and very effective link building tactic, starting at your own website is probably the best choice. You have optimal influence (well, if you're not being dictated by either a communication or an IT department) when it comes to anchor text, link location, target URL and many other factors.

For example, when your website has already been around for a while, it may have already attracted hundreds or thousands of links over time. Try to determine which of your pages are the most popular ones, and add links to relevant and/ or other important URLs to those pages. Navigation, website structure and proper alt attribution are just a few other examples of link marketing opportunities on your own website.

Ztrategy

Yeah, I know, I kinda cheated on this one, but having a well thought through ztrategy is so important that I couldn't leave it out. Having a clear view of your surroundings and adjusting your link marketing strategy to this situation is key to being successful.

A big mistake that I see being made quite often is folks who start link building without a plan, or with just very unrealistic goals. Link building without a plan is like riding a bike blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back; you'll probably survive the first few feet, but you don't know where you're going and will probably end on your face eventually. Also, when you're planning on pushing your relatively new website to top three rankings on highly competitive keywords within a few months, a lack of results will likely lead to losing faith and motivation pretty quickly.

Although the Z usually is the end of a list, it's definitely not the end of your link building campaign. Link building is a form of (search engine optimized) marketing, and marketing is never “done”.

Now that I've listed 26 different tactics that most of you might be able to use for your website, let's see if it's possible to create another list from A to Z in the comments. I'm pretty sure that all of the Mozzers are able to come up with another 26 link building tactics :)

Wow, what a great resource you've compiled here. So many times I see lists of link building tactics without discussing why one should be pursuing a particular link; you did an awesome job of explaining those why's that have got me thinking about other ways I can be building links.

Also, one of the highest quality posts I've seen on Youmoz lately (well, aside from Rishi's ;)

The quality of links are becoming increasingly important. I am the web master of my Web Design Company website and as we have an active SEO strategy, we attract dozens of traditional link exchange requests on a daily basis. At first we just disregarded most such emails. However, we are now thinking of adding a directory ono ur website where reciprocal links can be added by others. Is this a bad idea considering many of the sites requesting links may not be niche? On the other hand all of them are topical as they are mainly from other web design companies. What do you think is better, not to have a directory at all OR continue with the directory considering it is topical and thus attracts requests from other web design related sites. Is it really that bad an idea to have a reciprocal directory on a website even though it is topical and we will be selective in approving only sites witha certain PR. Please advice and share your experience, it will be much appreciated.

Great post on link building! The Yahoo Site Explorer is very helpful in identifying juicy links that could build into your whole SEO linking strategy (both by looking at the value of your existing links and your competitors). Very interesting to how you were able to format this post from A-Z. Impressive!

there's link building advice and then there's link building advice. Amazing post, a few refreshers there!

I may have missed it or you may not value it but I would also add review sites to this list, create a listing and ask customers to give an honest review about your service and products. Lots of people will use the web to find reviews about services products and brands, you should get a double whammy with this one.

I know this is an older post but it is still so very relevant. I believe that content is still the best way to build links that matter. If the world wide web doesn't like what your website sells or has on it why promote it?

Wow nice list, just found this blog 2 years later. Checked your website Weip nice. You have a nice writing flow. Another way to get .org or .edu links is to design or redesign their website. We designed the Santa Cruz film Festival's site last year, which is a non profit .org http://vabulous.com/website-development/portfolio/ This gives us a lot of traffic and link juice. Thanks for the post again.

Fantastic Post! I have taken many notes. One I had never thought of was emailing my former college to have an article posted. As I read this I emailed them and have already recieved a promising response.

I have heard of great results using the Q and A methods on websites. It provides something of legitamate value and if in the area you are trying to get links- effective. As well, the widgets idea works very well if useful. Convenience always has a value.

Thanks for the great post and tips on LinkBuilding. I agree that there tends to be all the same informating floating around about LinkBuilding but I think the key ingredient is creativity. Being creative to how you can acheive quality links that result in your goal of bringing traffic to your specified location.

Okay so here is the problem I see with this. If I have to build literally 10s of thousands of links how the heck does anything short of placing 12+ manual submissions into directories a day even help? I can understand articles because I can throw anchor text into the body and signiture but could someone explain to me how spending hours and days trying to work with charities and build widgets and building microsites and all that... how does that work? I don't get it.. the information is vague.. too vague and I feel depressed because I think catching up to the monsters is near impossible and my friggin future is at stake here. :(

Really descript list. It's got alot of the classics, but I think its one of the few times I've seen venues, charities, sponsorships and local business hubs mentioned in a list for link building. Nice list linking posts and site articles though!

I'm late to the party but this is a pretty awesome list. Implementing a diverse link building strategy for your clients is very important and following even half of the items on this list will bring in big rewards!

I'm also late to the party here, but this is probably the best link building list I have read posted freely online. Excellent post and kudos for freely giving away this information to the SEO community.

Thanks for the information. I just launched a website and trying to gain links. It's not that easy. I have an affiliate shopping website that offers several different categories. I could use any advice you are willing to give. Please visit my website at http://www.savings-for-you.com. If anyone is willing to link to it, I appreciate it. I am willing to return the favor.